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Anand: A Biblical Flood, a Girl’s Death, and a Great-Grandfather’s Legacy

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2025 //
7

Anand Giridharadas is a remarkable thinker and writer. In this post, he ties together the legacy of a very wealthy man who funded the fight against climate change and the terrible fate of his great-granddaughter Janie, who died in the flood in the Hill Cihntry of Texas.

He wrote:

In April 2013, Joe Barton, a Republican congressman from Texas, made a statement that transcended the traditional obscurity of House Subcommittee on Energy and Power proceedings to trigger national headlines. “Republican Congressman Cites Biblical Great Flood To Say Climate Change Isn’t Man-Made,” declared BuzzFeed.

In a hearing about the Keystone pipline, Representative Barton, whom The New Yorker once described as one of “Washington’s most vociferous — and, arguably, most dangerous — climate change deniers,” played the denier’s game of delinking human activity from weather events: “I would point out that if you’re a believer in the Bible, one would have to say the Great Flood is an example of climate change and that certainly wasn’t because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy.”

Three months later, Barton received a campaign contribution from William Herbert Hunt, an oil baron in Dallas. It was neither the beginning nor the end of their alliance. According to the Open Secrets database, Hunt had already donated to Barton about ten times since 2005. And Hunt would go on to donate to Barton another half dozen times, as well as to the Texas Freedom Fund, a political action committee linked to Barton. Though most of Hunt’s donations were to Barton, he also donated to other climate deniers and foes of environmental protection, such as Christi Craddick, David McKinley, Dan Sullivan, and Dan Patrick, who once said former President Barack Obama “thinks he can change the weather…because he thinks he’s God.”

I have not been able to get the Hunt family out of my heart after I learned from The New York Times over the weekend that one of William Herbert Hunt’s great-grandchildren, Janie Hunt, all of 9, was among the dozens tragically killed in those Texas floods that were biblical in proportion, if not in explanation. Remarkably, Janie was one of seven cousins who attended the camp, and the only one to die.

Now, I know how the internet works. I know people pounce on news items like this to make heartless, cruel comments. The object of this essay is very different from that.

I am a father, and I know what I’d do to protect my children’s lives. The answer is anything. I hope I live one day to become a great-grandfather. William Herbert Hunt, according to this Dallas Morning News obituary, passed in April 2024, at 95, a life long enough that he got to enjoy more than 72 years of married life, see his children and grandchildren grow and thrive, and even get to see 35 great-grandchildren of his line.

I have to imagine that Hunt, like me, would have done anything, absolutely anything, for his family. I even have to imagine that, if, by impossible magic, you could go back in time and a little birdie could whisper that one day a catastrophic flood, made more probable by climate change, made worse by fossil fuels, would claim one of his great-grandchildren at summer camp, Hunt might have reconsidered fundamental things.

I have to believe that, because I refuse to believe that being an oilman makes you any less human. When the equation is made that simple, anyone would do the right thing. Anyone would do what it takes to save their own flesh and blood. But when it becomes more abstracted — when one’s activities indirectly cause X, which indirectly causes Y, which sometimes makes Z happen more often than usual — the mind loses its clarity. When no individual happening can be definitively linked to climate change, the deniability, the not-knowing, grows easier still. Suddenly a human being can go from doing anything to save their kin to doing nothing to save everyone’s. A person who, I have to imagine, would have given his own life for his great-granddaughter’s donates to those who have fought for a world that makes deaths like hers more likely.

Source: OpenSecrets.org

I am not writing to accuse one man. On the contrary, this story of a great-grandfather and his great-granddaughter is a story of a whole country and its descendants. As always, some will say the death of children should not be politicized. I hear that. But, also, what is politics for if it’s not a debate about stopping the death of children?

I have sat with this story since I read the Times paragraph above. It has given me a pit in my stomach. I guess what one does with that is write. There is no glib I-told-you-so here. This is about what kind of great-grandparent all of us want to be, collectively. Do we want to put our heads down, do our work, justify it however we can justify it, donate to people who defend our interests, ignore the gathering evidence that we are on a path that will kill many of us and, at some point, take down the livable world?

Or do we want to be the kind of great-grandparent who right now is acting to save great-grandchildren who aren’t even born yet, but who one day, beside some river, surrounded by inner tubes and kayaks and Crocs and flip-flops and cabins and bunk beds and singalongs and brightly colored blankets — the kind of elder who defends those lives and their right to glorious summers even before we know their names?

What does it take to be that kind of great-grandparent now? It takes fighting back against the war on science that makes it harder for climate scientists and weather forecasters to do their jobs. It takes pushing back against extractive industries and their political protectors who would sell our future for a song, and who have made it unsafe for young girls to enjoy a Christian camp. It takes a campaign of media and organizing to educate people about the fact that a cabal of wealthy, well-connected corporate overlords is profiting at the expense of a future of carefree summers.

I am still sitting with the pit in my stomach. My heart goes out to the Hunt family, to those six surviving cousins who must be feeling so many awful things that children should never have to. They are feeling things many others have already had to feel, and that more and more of us are going to be feeling if we continue down this road.

On Instagram, an adult cousin of Janie, Tavia Hunt, who is the wife of Clark Hunt, the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs football team, shared the family’s pain and raised the old Jobian question of how to sustain faith in the wake of such inexplicable tragedy.

I am not a religious person, but my heart goes out to her, too. And, whether or not you believe in the god she cites above, it is also, of course, people who let things happen in this world we live in. It is also we who allow things to happen to us. And part of me wonders if, even hopes that, there might be an awakening from a story that connects cause to effect, upstream to downstream, more clearly than usual in a crisis that has long suffered from nebulousness. Perhaps this family, out of this horror, can help rouse the rest of us to become the great-grandparents our descendants deserve.

Categories Accountability, Environment, Texas

Texas Floods: Staff Cuts at Weather Service, Plus Local Refusal to Pay Taxes for Early Warning=Disaster

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2025 //
10

The disastrous floods that swept through Hill Country and caused the deaths of 80 or more people were made worse by human error.

The New York Times found that the local branches of the National Weather Service were short on staff; critical positions were empty. The computer specialists who worked for Elon Musk in an operation called DOGE decided that too many people worked for the National Weather Service. Some meteorologists took buyouts, others resigned.

Furthermore the affected area did not have an early warning ststem. Local taxpayers didn’t want to pay for it.

The quasi-libertarian belief that we don’t need government services and we shouldn’t pay for them took a toll on innocent people.

The combination of Musk’s ruthless cost-cutting and local hostility to taxes set the stage for a disastrous tragedy.

The Times reported:

Crucial positions at the local offices of the National Weather Service were unfilled as severe rainfall inundated parts of Central Texas on Friday morning, prompting some experts to question whether staffing shortages made it harder for the forecasting agency to coordinate with local emergency managers as floodwaters rose. 

Texas officials appeared to blame the Weather Service for issuing forecasts on Wednesday that underestimated how much rain was coming. But former Weather Service officials said the forecasts were as good as could be expected, given the enormous levels of rainfall and the storm’s unusually abrupt escalation.

The staffing shortages suggested a separate problem, those former officials said — the loss of experienced people who would typically have helped communicate with local authorities in the hours after flash flood warnings were issued overnight. 

The shortages are among the factors likely to be scrutinized as the death toll climbs from the floods. Separate questions have emerged about the preparedness of local communities, including Kerr County’s apparent lack of a local flood warning system. The county, roughly 50 miles northwest of San Antonio, is where many of the deaths occurred. 

In an interview, Rob Kelly, the Kerr County judge and its most senior elected official, said the county did not have a warning system because such systems are expensive, and local residents are resistant to new spending. 

“Taxpayers won’t pay for it,” Mr. Kelly said. Asked if people might reconsider in light of the catastrophe, he said, “I don’t know.”

The National Weather Service’s San Angelo office, which is responsible for some of the areas hit hardest by Friday’s flooding, was missing a senior hydrologist, staff forecaster and meteorologist in charge, according to Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, the union that represents Weather Service workers.

The Weather Service’s nearby San Antonio office, which covers other areas hit by the floods, also had significant vacancies, including a warning coordination meteorologist and science officer, Mr. Fahy said. Staff members in those positions are meant to work with local emergency managers to plan for floods, including when and how to warn local residents and help them evacuate.

That office’s warning coordination meteorologist left on April 30, after taking the early retirement package the Trump administration used to reduce the number of federal employees, according to a person with knowledge of his departure. 

Sign up for Your Places: Extreme Weather.  Get notified about extreme weather before it happens with custom alerts for places in the U.S. you choose. Get it sent to your inbox.

Some of the openings may predate the current Trump administration. But at both offices, the vacancy rate is roughly double what it was when Mr. Trump returned to the White House in January, according to Mr. Fahy.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Extremism, Funding, Musk, Elon, Texas

DOGE Cuts to NOAA and National Weather Service Blamed for Deaths in Texas Floods

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2025 //
28

Among its many stupid decisions, Elon Musk’s DOGE cut the staff of NOAA and the Natuonal Weather Service. Experts warned that people would die without accurate warnings. Trump ignored the warnings; so did Republicans in Congress. The cuts were imposed. The savings were a pittance. Unprepared for the storm and flooding in Texas a few days ago, people died.

Ron Filipowski wrote at The Meidas Report:

As the best and the brightest were being fired at the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration by senseless and draconian ‘DOGE’ cuts earlier this year under Trump, with no reason given except for the need to cut a paltry amount of the government’s budget, experts warned repeatedly that the cuts would have deadly consequences during the storm season. And they have.

Dozens and dozens of stories have been written in the media citing hundreds of experts which said that weather forecasting was never going to be the same, and that inaccurate forecasts were going to lead to fewer evacuations, impaired preparedness of first responders, and deadly consequences. I quoted many of them in my daily Bulletins and wrote about this issue nearly 20 different times. 

And the chickens have come home to roost. Hundreds of people have already been killed across the US in a variety of storms including deadly tornadoes – many of which were inaccurately forecasted. And we are just entering peak hurricane season. Meteorologist Chris Vagasky posted earlier this spring on social media: “The world’s example for weather services is being destroyed.” 

Now, after severe flooding in non-evacuated areas in Texas has left at least 24 dead with dozens more missing, including several young girls at a summer camp, Texas officials are blaming their failure to act on a faulty forecast by Donald Trump’s new National Weather Service gutted by cuts to their operating budget and most experienced personnel. 

At a press conference last night, one official said: “The original forecast we received on Wednesday from the National Weather Service predicted 3-6” of rain in the Concho Valley and 4-8” of rain in the hill country. The amount of rain that fell in these locations was never in any of their forecasts. Everybody got the forecast from the National Weather Service. They did not predict the amount of rain that we saw.” 

Reuters published a story just a few days ago, one of many warning about this problem: “In May, every living former director of the NWS signed on to an open letter with a warning that, if continued, Trump’s cuts to federal weather forecasting would create ‘needless loss of life’. Despite bipartisan congressional pushback for a restoration in staffing and funding to the NWS, sharp budget cuts remain on pace in projections for the 2026 budget for the NOAA, the parent organization of the NWS.”

But Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose agency oversees NOAA, testified before Congress on June 5 that the cuts wouldn’t be a problem because “we are transforming how we track storms and forecast weather with cutting-edge technology. Under no circumstances am I going to let public safety or public forecasting be touched.” Apparently the “cutting edge technology” hasn’t arrived yet.

And now presumably FEMA will be called upon to help pick up the pieces of shattered lives in Texas – an agency that Trump said repeatedly that he wants to abolish. In fact, Trump’s first FEMA director Cameron Hamilton was fired one day after he testified before Congress that FEMA should not be abolished. 

The voters of Texas decided that they wanted Donald Trump and Greg Abbott to be in charge of the government services they received. That is exactly what they are getting. And as of this writing on Saturday morning, Trump still hasn’t said a word about the storm and the little girls who were killed at the camp. 

However, Trump was seen dancing on the balcony of the White House last night celebrating the latest round of cuts in his budget bill that just became law so billionaires and corporations can have huge tax cuts. People are dying and more will die because of their recklessness, just like we saw during covid. And now millions won’t even have health insurance to deal with the consequences.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Texas

Molly Ivins: Vouchers Are a Stupid Idea

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2025 //
2

Molly Ivins was a brilliant journalist in Texas, who died far too young (62). We could surely use her wit and insight right now. She wrote for many publications, including The Texas Observer, The New York Times, the Dallas Times Herald, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She also wrote a nationally syndicated column.

Ivins wrote an article about school vouchers in 1997 that was prescient. All her dire predictions about vouchers were right on target. The strangest part of the debate is that state legislatures now debating vouchers are totally indifferent to the problems they create.

Ivins saw it coming.

She wrote:

Editor’s Note: The Texas Observer published this column in its April 11, 1997, edition under the headline: “Texas: Laboratory for Lunacy.” That year’s private school voucher proposal narrowly died at the Lege.

Three strikes and you’re out? Watch Texas spend more on prisons than it does on schools. Thinking of making your tax structure more regressive? Come to the Lone Star State and see how it’s done. 

The latest brainstorm to afflict our friendly pols in Austin is school vouchers. Consider the beauty of this nifty scheme as it might eventually be worked out under the guidance of the Texas Lege. To improve the public schools (I swear, that’s how the advocates are advertising this lunacy): 

■We give vouchers to all the students who are already in private or religious schools around the state. Right there, before anybody else even gets a voucher, we will have taken, say, $1 billion out of the budget for our public schools. Shrewd move, eh? 

■We also give all the kids now in public school a voucher, thus theoretically enabling these children to attend the schools of their parents’ choice: Unfortunately, private schools might find themselves under no obligation to accept any of our kids; they could be rejected because of their religious affiliation, their disabilities, on the grounds that they’re not bright enough, because the school administrators don’t like their looks—any reason not specifically excluded by law.

The Texas Freedom Network, a normally sensible group of good guys, is running around like Paul Revere, trying to alert the citizenry to this dread downside of the school voucher idea. “Proposed voucher legislation would allow private schools to recruit the best athletes and students at taxpayer expense.” Folks, we’re talking football now! I knew you’d be concerned. Quel horrifying thought: The whole high school football tradition is in dire peril. Stop the madness now! 

On a more sober note, the good private schools we’d all like to send our kids to already have waiting lists a mile long. No public school kid is going to St. John’s in Houston or St. Mark’s in Dallas with a voucher clutched in his or her little hand; those schools cost $10,000 a year, and our little school voucher won’t cover half the cost. 

Now maybe, just maybe, some upper-middle-class folks might be able to afford a fancy private school with a voucher to help, but working-class and middle-class kids are going to be stuck just where they always were. Why should we spend public money to help just that one thin slice of the population when it won’t improve the public schools? 

The rural kids are really going to get burned by this idea. As you may have noticed, almost all private schools are in cities. Hundreds of rural school districts don’t have a single private school, but because of the way state education financing works, they’d still lose thousands of dollars from their budgets for the public schools without a single kid going to private school. 

I realize this means nothing to our Legislature, but it should be mentioned that the whole idea is rankly unconstitutional. 

All in all, this concept is so bad that it has an excellent chance of passing the Legislature. Much as we would like to help the rest of the nation by demonstrating once more just how stupid ideas work out in practice, couldn’t we give this one a miss? 

In case you’re wondering who is pushing this dingbat notion, it’s the religious right, the same charmers who helped elect the right-wingers who now grace the state Board of Education. If you haven’t checked in on the state board lately, you really should. It’s a lot of fun—fruitcakes unlimited, flat-Earthers, creationists, all manner of remarkable specimens. In fact, it’s gotten so bad that there’s even a bill in the Lege to replace it with an appointed board again. 

You may recall that we’ve had this fight before. In keeping with my Theory of Perpetual Reform, I now favor an appointed board. Last time, I favored an elected board. What I really favor is the idea that no matter what we try, in about ten years, it’s always a mess again and we need to try something else. 

Speaking of matters educational, let me take on a sacred cow that is long past its prime: local control. Have you noticed that the people who consider local control of the schools a sanctified arrangement are the same people who are always complaining about how terrible the schools are? If local control is such a great idea, then how come the schools are so bad? Have we considered the possibility that maybe local control is the problem? 

A truism of the everlasting education debates is that someone somewhere has already solved whatever the problem is. Someone somewhere is always doing a brilliant job of teaching physics to inner-city kids, or teaching music to a bunch of rural kids in the 4-H who have heretofore considered Loretta Lynn classical music, or getting bored suburban brats excited about Herman Melville. 

The problem is that we can’t seem to replicate the successes in the schools across the board because there is no across the board. Instead, there’s local control. Sometimes it’s superb, granted. But often, it’s hopelessly knot-headed. Ask the folks in Dallas—they’ve had some lulus lately. It seems to me just possible that maybe what we need to do is take education out of the hands of insurance salesmen, Minute Women and other odd ephemera of the electoral process and put it in the hands of… well, educators. 

Categories Education Reform, Separation of church and state, Stupid, Texas, Vouchers

How Republicans Preserve White Supremacy

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2025 //
0

Michelle H. Davis writes a thoughtful blog on Substack called “Lone Star Left,” where she reports incisively on politics in Texas. This column explains how white supremacists keep Blacks and Hispanic unrepresented and disenfranchised: gerrymandering voting district. What’s happening in Texas is happening in other states, especially the South.

It’s hard to remember that Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Davis writes:

In the early 1960s, Black residents in Leflore County, Mississippi, comprised two-thirds of the population. Despite that, they had no political representation. In 1962, when voter registration of Black voters increased, the all-white Board of Supervisors (similar to a Commissioners’ Court in Texas) cut off federal surplus food aid, a lifeline for over 20,000 poor Black sharecroppers and farmworkers. This move came to be known as the Greenwood Food Blockade.

This move by the white Board of Supervisors exacerbated widespread poverty-induced hunger and malnutrition among Mississippi Delta sharecroppers. This laid the groundwork for long-term food insecurity, economic marginalization, and ongoing inequality in Mississippi that persists to this day.

This pattern is not new. Every time Black Americans have taken even a step toward political power, white supremacy has moved to snatch it back. In Greenwood, it meant starving families to stop them from voting. In Tarrant County today, it means redrawing district lines to erase Black representation, again, by a white-majority governing body.

What happened in Mississippi in 1962 wasn’t just about food. It was about control. And what happened in Tarrant County today isn’t just about maps. It’s about the same thing.

Today, the Tarrant County Commissioners Court voted to approve a redistricting map that effectively eliminates the seat of Commissioner Alisa Simmons, the only Black woman on the court.

It’s not a coincidence. It’s not neutral. It’s not “routine.” It is the calculated removal of a voice that dared to speak up for all of us.

Commissioner Simmons has stood firmly against the racist agenda pushed by Judge Tim O’Hare and the Republican Commissioners on the court. She spoke out against the rise in jail deaths under their watch. She called out the cruelty of defunding Girls Inc., a nonprofit that empowers young women of color. She opposed the elimination of free rides to the polls, which made it harder for working-class people, especially Black and brown voters, to cast a ballot.

And now, she’s being punished for it.

Commissioner Simmons wasn’t just a name on a ballot. She is my commissioner. I voted for her. I campaigned for her. And like thousands of others in Precinct 2, I saw her as a voice for the voiceless, a woman unafraid to shine a light on white supremacy, even when it came dressed in a suit and tie.

That light scared them. So they tried to snuff it out.

What we witnessed today was retaliation. It was white supremacy striking back at a Black woman who told the truth. And just like in Greenwood in 1962, they’re using the tools of power, maps, votes, and bureaucratic language, to do what they couldn’t do in public: silence her.

But we see it. We name it. And we will fight it.

The new map that the County Commissioners voted on today.

The Republican Commissioners and their defenders kept repeating the same excuse over and over again, “This wasn’t about race. It was just about politics.”

They said the map was designed to secure a Republican majority, not to silence Black voters. As if those two things aren’t deeply intertwined.

It’s the same argument Greg Abbott’s lawyers made in Shannon Perez v. Abbott, when Texas was caught racially gerrymandering districts. Their defense?

A direct quote from Greg Abbott: 

“It is not our intent to discriminate against minorities. It is our intent to discriminate against Democrats. If minorities happen to vote Democrat, that is their fault, not ours.”

That’s not a denial. That’s a confession….

Let’s stop pretending this distinction between race and party means anything in Texas. In Tarrant County, in Harris County, across the South, voter suppression by “party” is voter suppression by race. When you target the communities who dare to elect Black women, working-class progressives, young organizers, and civil rights leaders, you are targeting those communities on purpose.

They can say it’s about partisanship all they want. But we know what it’s really about.

Because when Conservatives talk about “conserving” something, they mean it.

They want to conserve white supremacy.

They want to conserve inequality, corporate power, and police brutality.

They want to conserve a system where jails are full, books are banned, teachers are silenced, and women don’t have autonomy.

They want to conserve a Texas where your zip code decides your worth, and where Black and brown voices are only welcome if they stay quiet.

And when people like Alisa Simmons refuse to stay quiet, they get erased.

But erasing her seat won’t erase her power, or ours….

And just when we thought we might get a win, it vanished as quickly as it came.

Yesterday, far-right extremist Tony Tinderholt (R-HD94) announced he would not seek reelection to the Texas House. For a brief moment, there was celebration across Arlington. A man who built his career on cruelty, censorship, and conspiracy was finally stepping aside. But the celebration didn’t last.

Because today, just minutes after the Tarrant County Commissioners voted to dismantle Precinct 2, Tinderholt announced he would run for that very seat, Alisa Simmons’ newly gutted district.

And he didn’t come alone.

Cheryl Bean, another far-right extremist and ally of Tinderholt, announced her run for the now-open HD94 seat. A seat that was, conveniently, made safer for someone like her under the new maps.

Bean doesn’t even live in the district. She changed her voter registration to a new address inside it—an address she doesn’t own, according to the Tarrant Appraisal District. Her real home? Still outside the district lines. But facts don’t matter when the plan is to bulldoze through communities with precision and arrogance.

This wasn’t a coincidence. It was a coordinated political hit job, plain and simple.

A rigged map. A choreographed retirement. A handoff. A handpicked replacement. All timed to disempower the voices of Black and brown voters in Tarrant County. All orchestrated by Tim O’Hare and the extremist wing of the Republican Party.

They knew Simmons couldn’t be beaten fairly.

So they changed the lines.

They cleared the field.

And then they tried to rewrite the future.

But we see them.

We know the playbook.

And we’re not going to let this go unanswered.

This is part of a broader, coordinated strategy across Texas to suppress the political power of Black and brown communities under the guise of partisan politics…..

To read the post in full, open the link.

Categories Bigotry, Character, Cheating, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, History, Racism, Republicans, Texas

The Battle Over the Ten Commandments in the Classroom

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2025 //
24

On Friday June 20, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Louisiana’s law requiring that schools post the Ten Commandments in every classroom.

On Saturday June 21, Governor Greg Abbot of Texas announced that he had signed a law requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in every classroom in the state.

The goal of plastering the Ten Commandments in every schoolroom is promoted by Christian nationalists who want to see an official declaration that the U.S. is a Christian nation.

The Founding Fathers would be stunned to hear the assertion that the Constitution they wrote was influenced by the Ten Commandments. The First Amendment very clearly states the importance of freedom of religion, meaning that anyone could practice any religion or none at all. It also declares that government should not “establish” any religion, meaning that government should not sponsor or endorse or favor any religion.

CNN reported:

Texas’ law requires public schools to post in classrooms a 16-by-20-inch (41-by-51-centimeter) poster or framed copy of a specific English version of the commandments, even though translations and interpretations vary across denominations, faiths and languages and may differ in homes and houses of worship.

Supporters say the Ten Commandments are part of the foundation of the United States’ judicial and educational systems and should be displayed.

NPR reported on the decision striking down the Louisiana law.

Its supporters said that the Ten Commandments were the foundation of the American legal system. The state of Louisiana intends to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The court’s ruling stems from a lawsuit filed last year by parents of Louisiana school children from various religious backgrounds, who said the law violates First Amendment language guaranteeing religious liberty and forbidding government establishment of religion.

The ruling also backs an order issued last fall by U.S. District Judge John deGravelles, who declared the mandate unconstitutional and ordered state education officials not to enforce it and to notify all local school boards in the state of his decision.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed the mandate into law last June.

Landry said in a statement Friday that he supports the attorney general’s plans to appeal.

“The Ten Commandments are the foundation of our laws — serving both an educational and historical purpose in our classrooms,” Landry said.

The Founding Fathers would laugh at Governor Abbot and Landry. And Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who shepherded a similar law in Arkansas. It’s especially funny that the leader of their party has broken almost every one of the Ten Commandments. Perhaps the place to start posting them is in the Oval Office.

Categories Education Reform, Extremism, Louisiana, Religion, Separation of church and state, Texas

Mothers Against Greg Abbott Sums Up the Awful Record of the Texas Legislature

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2025 //
0

You know the Bad MAGA, the one that wants to drag us back a century.

There is also a good MAGA: Mothers Against Greg Abbott.

It’s led by Nancy Thompson, who spends her time trying to help others, unlike the other MAGA.

My leading nominee for silliest bill of the year is this one: “Rep. Stan Gerdes filed HB 54, a bill that aims to ban non-human behaviors in Texas public schools.” This is an adult man who took seriously the absurd claim that some children asked for litter boxes because they identify as cats. That’s a wack-a-doo rumor, not a reality. Why not legislate about the best way to respond to men in flying saucers if they should land and disembark in Texas?

This her latest report on the Republican-dominated legislature in Texas, which does nothing to help others:
 

TX LEGE BREAKDOWN

📚 Education Legislation 📚

  • On April 24th, the Texas Senate voted to redirect $1 billion in taxpayer funds to their favored private schools in passing Greg Abbott’s school voucher bill. We (and tens of thousands of folks across Texas) organized hard to stop it, but a final phone call from Donald Trump sealed the deal. This scam on the taxpayers, I mean voucher bill, has just been signed into law by Abbott.
  • While voucher programs and charter schools are getting our hard-earned pennies, the TX Lege hasn’t passed a single public education funding bill yet this session. This is BS.

🏠 Housing and Water Legislation 🏠

  • HB 32 and its Senate companion, SB 38, would escalate the Texas housing crisis by making evictions faster, easier, and far more common. These are being sold as a fix for “squatters,” but in reality, the bills are Trojan horse policies that would dismantle due process, weaken eviction warnings, and reduce opportunities for legal protections for all renters in Texas.

😵‍💫 Wtf Legislation 😵‍💫

  • The Texas legislature has considered a record number of bills this year that only serve to bully transgender people. On April 23rd, the Senate approved SB 240, the ridiculously named “Texas Women’s Privacy Act,”which requires Texans to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with the gender assigned on their birth certificate — even if they’ve transitioned.
  • The Texas House passed HB 366, a bill that would make it a crime to distribute altered media, including political memes, without a government-approved disclaimer. Violators could face up to a year in jail. WTF?
  • Rep. Stan Gerdes filed HB 54, a bill that aims to ban non-human behaviors in Texas public schools.
  • The Texas Senate passed SB 1870, a bill that would prohibit cities from putting any citizen initiative on local ballots that would decriminalize marijuana.
  • The Texas House is expected to consider House Bill 2436, to exempt law enforcement officers from being charged for “deadly conduct” (killing members of the public) while in the line of duty. The Senate approved a similar bill in early April. This is a dangerous escalation of the power of state violence and a lack of accountability for the harm it causes.
  • The Texas Senate also approved SCR 42, which declares that the state only recognizes two genders. Let’s be clear: trans and intersex people have always existed. This is just more dangerous bullying toward a vulnerable minority from Texas Republicans.

HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED

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It’s important to be clear-eyed about the damage Texas Republicans — arm in arm with the Trump Administration — are inflicting on our state. When the consequences come, like underfunded classrooms, law enforcement officers shielded from legal consequences, and discrimination and violence against vulnerable people, we need to be ready to make sure Texans know who to hold accountable – Texas Republicans.

Get ready to use your voice when the time comes.

Nancy Thompson

Categories Funding, Stupid, Texas, Trump, Vouchers

Texas: More Than 700 Cases of Measles Reported

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2025 //
4

In 2000, the contagious disease measles was officially eradicated in the United States. However, since the rise of anti-vaccine anxieties during the COVID pandemic, a growing number of parents have refused to let their children be vaccinated.

Texas is the center of a measles outbreak. 702 children have measles; 95% had not been vaccinated. Two have died, neither of them had been vaccinated. The national number is certainly larger.

The Houston Chronicle reported:

The measles outbreak that started in the South Plains region of Texas surpassed 700 cases on Tuesday, according to health officials.

The latest update from the Texas Department of State Health Services shows the state has seen 702 cases of measles since the outbreak began spreading in late January. The outbreak, which has also spread to New Mexico and Oklahoma, is the largest in the United States since measles was declared eliminated in the country in 2000.

Two children, an 8-year-old girl and a 6-year-old girl, died after contracting the virus, and 91 people have been hospitalized. Neither child who died had received the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, and they did not have any underlying medical conditions, according to the DSHS.

Roughly two-thirds of cases in Texas have been in children and teens. More than 95% have been in individuals who are unvaccinated, or whose vaccination status is unknown.

Categories Health, Ignorance, Texas

Rob Curran: ICE Is Taking Away Our Neighbors

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2025 //
8

Rob Curran writes about finance and other topics for Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal, and other major publications. This article appeared in The Dallas Morning News.

Curran writes:

Neri Alvarado Borges was working for Latin Market Venezuelan Treats, which has locations in Far North Dallas and Lewisville, before he was deported to El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento Contra del Terrorismo last month.(Alvarado family / Courtesy)

****

The Trump administration has couched its aggressive ramp-up of deportations as an action to root out criminals. But signs are quickly emerging that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency is scooping up hardworking North Texas migrants with little or no criminal past in its “crackdown.”

Last week, editorial columnist Robert Wilonsky chronicled the case of Neri Alvarado Borges, a young Lewisville resident with a jigsaw-ribbon tattoo associated with autism awareness he wore in honor of his autistic little brother. Did Alvarado look like a hardened criminal to you?

In February, the Venezuelan citizen was seized by ICE officers outside his apartment, and eventually taken to an El Salvadoran prison with suspected members of the Tren de Aragua gang. If he ever gets out, Alvarado’s trauma will be lifelong.

Paul Hunker is a Dallas immigration attorney and former chief counsel of the Dallas office of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Since the Trump administration took power, Hunker has been shocked by the profile of clients who come to him for help fighting deportation proceedings, he told me. These clients typically do not have criminal histories, Hunker said. They are hardworking members of the community, longtime residents. There’s a brief police encounter, a routine traffic stop, and they land in ICE custody.

“The model is detain-and-deport,” Hunker said. “The focus [in my time] was people who were a threat to their community, national-security threats and recent entrants. … Now they’re just going after everybody, even if they’ve been here for 20 years, with family ties. It doesn’t matter.”

ICE’s remit has changed drastically, and that change threatens to drag us all into something akin to a police state. ICE, and before it the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s enforcement arm, traditionally worked with the border patrol, focused on preventing undocumented migrants crossing the border. Apprehending a migrant in the act of an irregular border crossing is a vital part of rule-keeping, and something that has happened throughout U.S. history. Dragging family men out of their cars, throwing them into detention centers and kicking them out of the country is something ICE has never done. Until now.

That’s what appears to be happening to Jesus Ramos, of Lewisville. He, like me, is a green-card holder. Now, he’s facing deportation, allegedly because of nonviolent offenses in his past which have already been adjudicated. Ramos is on probation for simple assault and intent to possess drugs, according to reporting from NBC5.

He may have some substance-abuse problems, but Ramos is not a hardened criminal. Most families have members who go through similar struggles.

There are other stories. In Cedar Park in January, a young Venezuelan man with no criminal record was apprehended by ICE, according to an NPR story which withheld his name. Immigration officers told his family that the 18-year-old had appeared in an online video with guns and drugs, but they couldn’t produce the video for the family or for NPR.

ICE is still targeting serious offenders as the agency has always done since it launched in 2003, according to Hunker. But, as these cases and many of Hunker’s cases illustrate, ICE has new targets, too. And they are targets that we all know well.

ICE is targeting the people who climb on our roofs after hailstorms to fix the shingles. ICE is targeting the people who clean our houses and mind our children. What happens the next time your house-cleaner or your handyman drives home after a few too many?

That’s when the thorny moral question arises, the one your grandchildren may ask you: What did you do when dear, dear Nanny Gloria was swept up by burly officers and thrown in a cell?

What could you do? You will say. You were just one person.

“Tell your congressmen, ‘We don’t want this police state,’” said Hunker, who worked for ICE and its predecessor for more than 20 years. “‘Let ICE focus on people that are dangerous, and don’t try to deport those people who have their lives here.’”

I was reared in Ireland where memories of 1930s Central Europe were fresh. We are not there, yet or hopefully ever, but 20th-century history is no longer an abstract lesson. 

My grandmother met some of the young people brought to London in the Kindertransport operation that evacuated Jewish children from Central Europe before World War II. She inspired my mother with a compassion for displaced families, and an animus for state authorities who displaced those families because of their outsider status. 

It is all too easy, my mother taught me, to turn a blind eye to the state’s mistreatment of vulnerable outsiders. 

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Houston. I saw an ICE officer cruising around a strip mall in her patrol SUV, and felt a familiar chill. As a reporter with interest in the subject, I wanted to ask the officer why she was there, who she was looking for. But I turned my back, and moved on.

In Ireland, looking on from across the ocean, we contrasted Europe’s 20th-century dystopia with Reagan’s America, a land where hard work and enterprise counted for more than paperwork. Kids a few years ahead of us in school escaped to New York and Chicago from recession-wracked Ireland. A few won green-card lotteries. Most fudged the paperwork for a few years. Nobody shook them down. They were allowed to build skyscrapers, restaurant chains and plumbing empires, and sort the paperwork out later.

Now their children run emergency rooms, law offices and trading floors all over this nation.

That’s the story of immigration in modern America. The authorities have always sought to facilitate the inclusion of hardworking immigrants, rather than seeking to exclude and detain people for paperwork reasons.

The Trump administration continues to insist it is only targeting migrants with a criminal past. ICE’s broad interpretation of those criteria is what troubles me. Who’s to say that today’s deportation for DUI won’t be tomorrow’s deportation for a traffic violation, or for having the wrong surname?

Or writing a newspaper column critical of the regime. My green card is soon up for renewal. I sometimes fear it will be revoked by the thin-skinned Trump government.

But I must be able to look my children in the eye, and so I must speak up for Neri Alvarado and for Jesus Ramos and an unnamed Venezuelan 18-year-old.

Someone has to.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Immigration, Texas, Trump

Elon Musk Has His Own Town in Texas

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2025 //
6

Elon Musk plans to expand his rocket business, in hopes of eventually reaching Mars. He moved his rocket business to Texas, far from the environmentalists who get in his way. So he bought a massive plot of land in Texas and started building the new town of Starbase. The residents of Starbase, almost all employed by Musk, held an election and voted to create a new town. Surprise! It was a landslide, reports Berenice Garcia of The Texas Tribune. He calls Srarbase a city, but with a likely population of 500 residents, it’s a small town.

BROWNSVILLE — Elon Musk’s wish to create his own city just came true.

On Saturday, voters living around SpaceX’s rocket testing and launch facility in South Texas approved a measure to incorporate the area as a new city. Soon after polls closed at 7 p.m., Cameron County election officials confirmed that overwhelming support among early voters clinched the election in favor of creating the City of Starbase.

Unofficial results later in the night showed the election was a landslide: 212 voted in favor; 6 opposed.

After the county certifies the results, the new city will be official.

Musk celebrated the vote Saturday night with a single word posted to X: “S T A R B A S E.”

But there were no signs of a celebration at Starbase itself. After a gray, rainy Election Day, the soon-to-be-city had a quiet night. No fireworks. No street parties. A few folks gathered at the Astropub, a bar for SpaceX employees, late into the evening.

Only 283 people, those who live within the boundaries of the proposed city, were eligible to vote in the election. A Texas Newsroom analysis of the voter rolls showed two-thirds of them either work for SpaceX or had already indicated their support.

The three unopposed people who ran to lead the city also have ties to SpaceX.

It’s not clear if Musk, whose primary residence is here, cast a ballot.

The vote clears the way for Musk to try to capture more control over the nearby public beach, which must be closed for launches. On Saturday afternoon, a few dozen activists who say the company has harmed sensitive habitats and ignored the cultural importance of the land rallied on the beach — with an Elon Musk piñata in tow.

“These hills here are sacred to us,” Juan Mancias, chair of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, told The Texas Newsroom. “They don’t know the history of the land, and they’re trying to erase that.”

Creating a city in Texas is not unusual. New ones are formed all the time. Company towns are also an undeniably American feature.

But Musk may be the first entrepreneur in modern history to incorporate his own town almost solely for his employees. And the effort may not be his last. He’s also floated the idea of founding another city at his corporate compound outside Austin….

Just down the road from the SpaceX launch site is Boca Chica Beach. A public strip sandwiched between South Padre Island and the Rio Grande, the beach is popular with locals who fish, drive and camp on its windy dunes.

The area has become less accessible in the years since SpaceX arrived. That’s because it must be evacuated for safety each time a rocket is tested. SpaceX is asking for approval to increase its launches from about five to 25 times a year.

Right now, Cameron County commissioners decide when to close access to the beach. That may soon change.

SpaceX is backing a bill making its way through the Texas Legislature that would shift the beach closure authority to Starbase city commissioners on weekdays. It has already been approved by the Texas Senate and is pending a vote by the full House…

At the beach on Saturday, the protesters said local politicians have not properly protected the land. Environmentalists, indigenous leaders and local fishermen said the beach needs to remain out of SpaceX’s control.

Categories Elections, Musk, Elon, Texas
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